The Value of Nothing
by Soumyee
Summary: Away from home and haunting memories, she tries to move on with her life. The past, however, would not be buried so easily.
1. From the First Floor Bedroom Window

_**Disclaimer:** If I don't take any names, I don't steal anyone! Teehee hee! *sneak sneak*  
_

_

* * *

_

_**From the First Floor Bedroom Window**_

It was a tiny apartment, facing the children's park. Conveniently located close to her university, and far far away from home. She was thankful for both. _Home_ was no more a happy place to be, and she was better off living alone over here. It had cost a fortune to buy this place, but money was after all quickly made. If anyone back home had heard her say this, they would surely flip over in shock, but she had been forced to learn the hard facts that there were things more important than money. Like peace of mind. Which is why she had left home and come here in the first place.

It was a two storied apartment, with the kitchen, the hall and a tiny closet on the ground floor. A bedroom and the bath were on the first floor. She had just moved in; her things still lying unpacked in boxes scattered all over the hall. Aware of the tedious task of settling in looming over her head, she let out a long sigh. Hard work was not a very pleasant prospect to her, and was mostly left to her several lackeys. But this was not Nerima, and she did not have lackeys here, at least not yet. She had no doubts, however, that she would have some pretty soon. Till then… She sighed again.

Casting a dismal look at all the boxes scattered around, she decided to take a breather before delving into the task at hand. Wading through all the clutter, she went up to the stairs and made her way to the first floor. The bedroom was cozy looking, with a huge window letting in an abundance of sunshine. Smiling, she sauntered over to the window and looked out at the children's park.

A small child sat at the top of a slide in the middle of the park. His mother crouched at the bottom, waiting to receive him with open arms. He pushed himself off and whizzed down the slide, a scream of glee ripping from his throat. His pigtail snagged in the wind and blew out behind him. She froze.

"_What sacrilege! You DARED to stay in my house and cast your unclean shadow on us?"_

"_Oh my! I must wash everything now!"_

"_Dirty blood! Get out of my house! Get out, NOW!"_

"_Oh my! Thank God we found it out on time, Akane! Stay away from him, come here!"_

"_Don't touch my daughter!"_

The pigtailed child finished his ride and swished down into his mother's arms. She hugged him to her chest and stood up, both mother and child giggling in happiness. The mother carried the little boy back to the top of the slide and hurried back around to crouch at the bottom herself. The child whooshed down again, pigtail flying behind him.

_The rain poured down in torrents, distorting the world, as seen through the window pane of a first floor bedroom. A family walked out the little gate in the yard below. The man in the front, his shoulders stooped under the weight of his backpack, his pride hunched under the weight of his ancestors. Beside him, the woman walked stiffly, proudly, her head held high. No stain on Earth could bow that head. They walked out the gate, without looking back._

_And he followed – their son. His feet dragged, his head bent. She watched him from the first floor bedroom window. She would never have thought how much difference it made to him when he did not have that cocky smile, his chest puffed out, when his pigtail did not bounce in the wake of his arrogant stride. It seemed to take him forever to cross the two yards to the little gate. And when he did, he stopped, hesitating, afraid. Afraid? Him? It was unthinkable, yet so real._

_He had turned then, one last time. Maybe he had sensed the pair of eyes at a first floor bedroom window. But no, he hadn't looked at herself. He had looked at the other window, the one that he usually always looked at._

_She did not know if there was anyone at that other window. And if there was someone, the rain would have prevented him from seeing anyone. Did it pain him? To not be able to see for one last time… _

_He had turned back to the gate and walked out, following after his parents._

She watched as the little boy pumped his tiny fists into the air, full of confidence in himself and the world. The world was yet untainted for him.

As it had been for _him_ as well, until she had hurled reality into his face.

Oh well, no time for reminiscing. She still had to unpack. Turning away from the window, she made a note to herself to buy shades for it; the sunlight was too bright and would disturb her sleep early in the morning.

* * *

_So this one, much like Meeting a Stranger, started as a drabble for Neriman Days, and ended up as a standalone fic. :D _

_Also, this started out from the POV of Akane, but midway through (actually at the point where he senses a pair of eyes at the window) I felt it would be more appropriate from Nabiki's viewpoint. So, I went back and changed a few things to match her personality more (although I don't think I did a very good job... =.=" ) and viola~_

_Ta~daa~_

_This is kinda emo... o.O" Pretty surprising for me... Am I sinking into depression? o.O" =.="_

_Ahh! *Dreams of diving in a swimming pool of reviews* Reviewwwwwwww~~ *splish splash*_

_Do you think the ending was abrupt?  
_


	2. Oneechan

_**Disclaimer:** Scroodge McDuck does not belong to me... :D Oh, uh... Neither does Ranma... ToT_

_

* * *

_

_**Oneechan**_

The first day of university was… _interesting._ The Accounting teacher had been pretty young, and seemingly smitten by her. Hmm… There were rooms of opportunities there. Apart from that, the computer facilities were free for all the students, 24x7. However, it was very very crowded, and all the terminals seemed to be always occupied. She would have to see about that. The Computer Center In-charge was a lady, a very Scroodge McDuck-ish lady. _Difficult. But not impossible._

She made her way along the crowded corridors and towards the cafeteria. It had been a hard decision to make, but, in the end, she had opted to spend for lunch in the cafeteria than to spend for cooking classes. After all, if everything went according to her wishes – and things usually tended to do that – pretty soon she would have lackeys to bring free lunch for her.

She arrived at the outdoors café and joined the queue lining up at the service counter. The line inched forward slowly, giving her ample time to do what she was best at – _observe._ Her eyes trawled through the milling mass of faces, committing everything of significance and insignificance to memory. That kid in the black jacket was probably a drug addict, judging from his rapidly roving red-tinged bright eyes and twitching fingers – good blackmail material. That girl wearing that green blouse probably had a crush on the boy with the spiky hair – she looked at him so often and blushed. That posse of girls preening themselves was going to give her trouble later, better do something about it sooner.

Her turn at the counter came up and she ordered a large burger with fries. Collecting her order, she picked up the tray and went over to sit by herself at an empty table. Letting her teeth sink into the burger, she continued to scan the crowds.

"May I sit here?"

The sudden voice interrupting her pleasant lunch made her look up at the speaker, straight into a pair of brown eyes and short blue hair.

"_O-nye-cha! O-nye-cha! Cawy me pweese?"_

"_O-nye-chan! Let's play hidey hidey!"_

"_Oneechan! Look! A starfish! Ain't it pretty?"_

"_Oneechan, why did you take my teddy?"_

"_Oneechan! I made you a cake! Happy birthday!"_

"_Oneechan! That is my dress! Don't just wear it without asking!"_

"_NO! Oneechan! Grab my hand! Don't let go!"_

"_Oneechan! You're alright…"_

"Oh sorry, I didn't mean to intrude." Abruptly, she was snapped back to reality as the strange girl hurriedly apologized and left to sit with someone else, probably someone who would give her a proper answer instead of staring wordlessly at her. Her short hair caught the sunlight and blue streaks played hide-n-seek in it.

_A pale hand rose to knock on a wooden door. She watched the door open and her little sister walk in. My sister… _

"_Oneechan…"_

_She waited for more words to spill out from her sister's mouth, and finish what she was going to say._

"_Oneechan… Is it okay… If I go…?"_

_And she had feigned nonchalance. She had feigned indifference. She had feigned that she did not know what it would mean for her baby sister. She had feigned that she did not know what blow it could deal to her baby sister. She had let the girl go…_

"_Thank you, Oneechan…"_

_And she had pretended that the words were well-deserved…_

_She had watched as her father and her elder sister had worried when they made the discovery._

"_My baby girl! MY BABY GIRL!"_

"_Oh my! Where could she be? I wonder if she'll come back before dinner?"_

_The solitary sheet of paper that lay on the desk inside the room with the yellow duck nameplate, told them that her li'l sis would be gone on a week-long, no need to worry. Yet, her father did, and so did her elder sister. She had wondered if she was the only one sane in the house. She had wondered why anyone thought that anything could happen to an eighteen year old girl who was a martial artist. Anyway, time was gold, and the matter was not worth her time. _

_She left the room. Daddy kept crying._

She sat alone under the midday sun on a cafeteria bench, the burger still half-way to her mouth and she could not remove her eyes from the strange girl as the latter walked over to sit at another table. Apparently, the people at the other table welcomed her, for she sat down with them, and _smiled_.

_She lay in the dojo – her little sister. She did not smile anymore. In fact, she hadn't been smiling for quite many days before this happened, even before she had left on that week-long trip nearly a month ago. But that had been expected behavior. However, right then, there were no tell-tale tears trails on her face either. And that was surprising._

_A random thought drifted past her mind that she was capable of surprise even then. She felt both disdain and pride at that thought; disdain that random thoughts could find a place in her brain despite how organized she maintained it, pride that she could still keep calm despite the fact that her sister was no more smiling or crying._

_Father was crying though, collapsed in a heap next to her expressionless little sister. And her elder sister, too. The doctor was there, although he certainly was of no use; the dagger buried to the hilt above the prone girl's left breast and the amount of blood that had spilled out on the dojo floor clearly indicated that the youngest daughter of the house was dead. _

_A funeral needed to be arranged. She fished out her abacus and had begun clicking away on it, calculating the expenses that would need to be paid._

It was time to go back to her classes. She stood up and walked past the table the strange girl was sitting at, her arms swinging to and fro apace with her steps. It could have been an illusion, an imagination, but, for a moment, it appeared as though her hand lightly brushed through a lock of short blue-black hair.

* * *

_I need a better way to indicate when a flashback starts... =.="_

_Oh goody! Time for you to reviewwwww~ Ta!  
_


	3. Memoirs of the Dead

**_Disclaimer: _**_Psst... I was the tooth fairy who gave Rumiko Takahashi the idea about Ranma...! ^o^ _

_*Liars go to HELL!* ToT_

_

* * *

_

_**Memoirs of the Dead**_

"_**Under the flexible foreign exchange rate, scenario devaluation has become redundant". Comment upon the statement.**_

Tch! Was she really required to answer such stupid questions? _This_ was University level? Pitiful. Oh well, she still needed to do it, because it was homework and needed to be submitted the next day. And really… Did the pen have to give out now?

Gritting her teeth, she got up to rummage in one of the boxes still lying near the bedroom door. She hadn't gotten around to unpacking completely; it was boring and laborious like hell! She lifted the flaps of a few boxes and finally found one which contained her stationery. Thrusting one hand into the mass of books and erasers and stapler pins and calculators, she groped around for an ink bottle. Her fingers found something that felt like the bottle and she pulled it out. As it came free of the rest of the stuff, she noticed a red ribbon – a bookmark of sorts – caught between her thumb and the bottle being pulled out. A brown leather covered diary tumbled out of the box and fell into her lap. Her eyes grew wide.

_The resounding sound of silence filled the whole house. The whisper of paper sounded unnaturally loud. She flicked through the pages of a leather-bound diary, just like she had done a million times before – it was nothing new, and, more importantly, the owner of the diary was dead and so would not probably mind._

_Her baby sister had had a horrible handwriting. It was giving her a headache to read through. And no dates either. What was the point of a diary without dates?_

_...  
_

"_They are dirty people. It was right of Oneechan to tell about it to father and have them thrown out. They really deserved it. No one respects people like that, no matter how good they are. I remembered seeing people like him when I was a little girl. Everyone avoided them like the plague. They didn't even keep their voices low as they pointed at those tainted people. It was bad enough that they lived with us for over a year; it will take us so long to do penance for this extended contact with them. Thank goodness that the wedding did not go through. Otherwise, I would have been equally tainted. I never want to be one of them! It was right of Oneechan, it was right , it was right!"_

_..._

"_Ukyou sent me a letter. She is marrying him. Ukyou-no-baka! Why is she marrying him? She says she'll make him a Kuonji and remove the taint. Bad blood is bad blood! A name can change nothing! And why the hell does she want to taint herself as well? This is foolish! I can't let her do that! I'm going to stop her from marrying him! I won't let him marry her! I'm going to go! I have asked Oneechan and she says it's okay for me to go. I'll stop this marriage at any cost! It's wrong! Just so wrong!"_

_..._

"_I saw him. He was marrying her. He did not look happy. Or sad. Or angry. Or anything. He did not look anything. He… he was… hollow… Hollow… His eyes looked… dead… I, I couldn't say anything. He married her. In front of me. They kissed, even. She kissed him. And when they walked past me, she said to me, 'You are a monster.' _

_I am a monster? Me? ME? I tried to save her! I tried to stop her from ruining her life! And I'm the monster? He would not even look at me! I was right there, and she was calling me a monster and he did not even stop her! He always stopped them from hurting me before, but he did not even stop her… And she was hugging him... She had her arm around him... She didn't care what stain it smeared on her!"_

_..._

"_Why could she hug him? Why could she hold him? Why could she be near him? Why? Why couldn't I? Why couldn't I? Why? Why? WHY? They said he was a Burakumin! They said his family was like shit! They said I couldn't go near him! That if I did, I'd no more be a part of my family! I'd lose everyone! I'd lose my father! I'd lose my sisters! My friends! I'd lose my honor! My name! I'd be no one! Nothing! Without my family and friends, I'm nothing at all! But… but, I saw him getting married to her… And I, I… He's gone… Forever… And I can't get him back… He doesn't even want to come back, maybe… I'll never see him again… Never… I'll always be… be… without him… Without him, I—_

_..._

_She had closed the diary abruptly. It was time for dinner._

She stared at the leather-bound face of the diary like it was an alien. Slowly, she picked it up and tossed it into a corner. She didn't even know why she had brought it with her from home, but it was probably a decision made while in the clutches of sleep. She did not need unnecessary clutter in her new house. She would throw that thing out with the trash first thing in the morning.

* * *

_=.=" Am I the only one who thinks that the pattern is getting repetitive? _

_Nabiki sees something, she stiffens in rememberance, sad memories follow, Nabiki snaps back to reality and shrugs them off... =.="_

_Okay, I need to get more creative... . _

_Please review, and any suggestions would be welcome~ ^o^  
_


End file.
